American politics

Herman Cain

Rolling on

Oct 31st 2011, 21:32by E.M. | WASHINGTON, DC

BY THE standards of bimbo eruptions, the revelation that Herman Cain was accused of sexual harassment by two subordinates when he was head of the National Restaurant Association is not exactly a pyroclastic flow. For one thing, the accusers remain anonymous. There is no injured woman weeping convincingly before the television cameras. For another, the charges are relatively modest: that he made the pair feel "uncomfortable" with sexual jokes and the like. Mr Cain, unsurprisingly, has produced an eloquent and forceful denial, replete with phrases like “falsely accused” and “cleared of any wrong-doing”. Mainly, however, Mr Cain has been saved by the amazing grace of which he likes to sing, which has delivered his candidacy from slings and arrows of almost every kind.

It is not that the allegations against Mr Cain are clearly implausible. The NRA (forks, not guns) seems to have paid his accusers off—not proof of his guilt, certainly, but enough to suggest that there was some room for doubt. He often remarks that America needs a sense of humour, an admission, of sorts, that plenty of people find things he says distasteful. Just before he issued a stentorian denial of any misconduct at an event at the National Press Club today, he clasped the woman sitting next to him on the stage in an oddly familiar manner. At 65, he is of a generation with a rather more liberal understanding of permissible behaviour than pertains in most American offices these days.

But since no one is exactly sure how it is that the Cain train keeps moving forward, it is not clear what will derail it. All sorts of things that might have sunk a less blessed candidate—his near-total ignorance of foreign affairs, the flaws of his signature policy, the lack of campaign infrastructure, widespread scepticism in the media, indifference verging on disdain from the grandees in his party—have had little impact on Cain 2012. He is poised, charming, eloquent, has a catchy slogan, and is not Mitt Romney. For the moment, at least, the polls suggest that Republican primary voters are willing to put almost everything else aside.